All That Fall

Synopsis

Comedy charting the journey of old and unwieldy Mrs Rooney as she drags herself towards a railway station on a Saturday lunchtime to meet her blind husband on his way back from the office to guide him home. Along the way she passes the time of day with a man with a dung cart and a man with a bicycle. A third man with a motor-car offers her a lift and a church-struck spinster helps her up the station steps. Originally commissioned by the BBC as a radio play and first heard on the Third Programme in 1957.

Our Review:

9 November 2012

The combination of Michael Gambon, Eileen Atkins, Trevor Nunn and Samuel Beckett hardly needs a marketing boost, but if you are hesitating about whether or not to see this rare revival that has transferred from the tiny Jermyn Street to the larger Arts Theatre, please don't. It's magnificent.

Central among its magnificences is the performance of Atkins as Maddy Rooney, who sets off down an Irish country lane to meet her husband at the station. "I suppose you wouldn't be in need of a small load of dung?" enquires the first of her several encounters on the way, Christy (Ruairi Conaghan). "Dung? What class of dung?" comes her cool and flirtatious reply.

It's a typical line from a woman who, like so many of Beckett's creations, wraps her inner torments of guilt, loss and sexual frustration in a heavy coat of dark humour. As her odyssey continues her thoughts constantly return to Minnie, a long lost...

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Latest User Review

Front Row Dress - 9 November 2012:

Thanks David Baxter, I thought it was just me. Agree with all you said and put my own two penneth worth on my blog at http://www.frontrowdress.com/2012/11/all-that-fall-arts-theatre-thursday-8.html...

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